Saint Raphael the Archangel

As the Patron Saint of Healing, Raphael Heals Body, Mind, and Spirit

A ceiling mosaic of Saint Archangel Raphael.

Danita Delimont / Getty Images

Saint Raphael the Archangel serves as the patron saint of healing. Unlike most saints, Raphael was never a human being who lived on Earth. Instead, he has always been a heavenly angel. He was declared a saint in honor of his work helping humanity.

As one of God's leading archangels, Raphael serves people who need to heal in body, mind, and spirit. Raphael also helps people in health professions, such as doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and counselors. He is also a patron saint of young people, love, travelers, and people seeking protection from nightmares.

Healing People Physically

People often pray for Raphael's help in healing their bodies from illnesses and injuries. Raphael clears away toxic spiritual energy that has harmed people's physical health, promoting good health in every area of the body.

Stories of miracles resulting from Raphael's intervention span the full range of physical healing. These include major improvements like better function for major organs (such as the heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, eyes, and ears) and recovered use of injured limbs. They also include everyday health improvements like relief from allergies, headaches, and stomachaches.

Raphael can heal people who are suffering from acute sicknesses (like an infection) or sudden injuries (like wounds from a car accident), as well as those who need healing for chronic conditions (such as diabetes, cancer, or paralysis) if God chooses to heal them.

Usually, God answers prayers for healing within the natural order of the world he has created, rather than supernaturally. God often assigns Raphael to answer people's prayer requests for good health by blessing their medical care as they pursue natural means of attaining good health, such as taking medications, having surgery, doing physical therapy, eating nutritiously, drinking water, and getting enough sleep and exercise. Although Raphael may heal people instantly after prayer alone, that's rarely how the healing process happens.

Healing People Mentally and Emotionally

Raphael also heals people's minds and emotions by working with God's Spirit to help change people's thoughts and feelings. Believers often pray for help from Raphael to recover from mental and emotional suffering.

Thoughts lead to attitudes and actions which then lead people's lives either closer to or farther away from God. Raphael directs people's attention to their thoughts and urges them to evaluate how healthy those thoughts are, according to whether or not they reflect God's perspective. People who are stuck in a rut of unhealthy thought patterns that are fueling an addiction (such as to pornography, alcohol, gambling, overworking, overeating, etc.) can call on Raphael to help them break free and overcome addiction. They seek to change the way they think, which will then help them replace the addictive behavior with healthier habits.

Raphael can help people change the way they think and feel about other persistent problems in their lives that they need to figure out how to navigate wisely, such as relationships with difficult people and challenging life circumstances that linger, like unemployment. Through Raphael's help, people can get new ideas that can lead to healing breakthroughs in situations like these.

Many believers pray for Raphael's help to heal from emotional pain in their lives. No matter how they have suffered the pain (such as in a traumatic event or betrayal in a relationship), Raphael can guide them through the process of healing from it. Sometimes Raphael sends people messages in their dreams to give them the healing breakthroughs they need.

Some of the emotionally painful issues that Raphael often helps people heal from are: dealing with anger (figuring out the root issue and expressing anger in constructive, not destructive ways), overcoming worry (understanding what anxiety is fueling the worry and learning how to trust God to handle concerns), recovering from the breakup of a romantic relationship (letting go and moving on with hope and confidence), recovering from fatigue (learning how to manage stress better and get more rest), and healing from grief (comforting people who have lost a loved one to death and helping them adjust).​

Healing People Spiritually

Since Raphael's ultimate focus is to help people grow closer to God, the source of all healing, Raphael is especially interested in spiritual healing, which will last for eternity. Spiritual healing involves overcoming sinful attitudes and actions that hurt people and alienate them from God. Raphael can bring sins to people's attention and motivate them to confess those sins to God. This great healing angel can also help people learn how to replace the unhealthy behaviors of those sins with healthy behaviors that move them closer to God.

Raphael emphasizes the importance of forgiveness because God is love at his essence, which compels him to forgive. God wants humans (whom he has made in his image) to also pursue loving forgiveness. While people are following Raphael's lead through the healing process, they learn how to accept God's forgiveness for their own mistakes that they have confessed and turned away from, as well as how to rely on God's strength to empower them to forgive others who have hurt them in the past.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, the patron saint of healing, intervenes to heal people from any type of brokenness and pain in the earthly dimension and looks forward to welcoming them to lives in heaven, where they won't need to be healed of anything anymore because they will live in perfect health as God intends.

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Hopler, Whitney. "Saint Raphael the Archangel." Learn Religions, Jul. 29, 2021, learnreligions.com/saint-raphael-the-archangel-124675. Hopler, Whitney. (2021, July 29). Saint Raphael the Archangel. Retrieved from https://www.learnreligions.com/saint-raphael-the-archangel-124675 Hopler, Whitney. "Saint Raphael the Archangel." Learn Religions. https://www.learnreligions.com/saint-raphael-the-archangel-124675 (accessed March 29, 2024).